Sierra Nevada Resilience Butte County Proud IPA Recipe

Sierra Nevada asked the brewing community for help, and more than 1,000 breweries stood up. A special IPA is coming to taps near you soon to help victims of the California wild fires, and you can brew the recipe at home.

Following the devastating wild fires that recently ravaged parts of northern California, the area’s largest craft brewer, Sierra Nevada Brewing Co., put out a call to action and offered people a way to donate and help via local charities.

They then went a step farther, taking a page out of other breweries’ playbooks, and decided to brew a beer to help with disaster recovery with 100 percent of the proceeds going to aid those in need. They then offered up the recipe of the beer, Resilience Butte County Proud IPA, to any brewery in the country that was interested in brewing it, with those proceeds also going to help those affected. The Sierra Nevada also reached out to malt, hops, and yeast suppliers to donate ingredients to be used in the beer.

The response was swift and positive, and earlier this week on “Giving Tuesday,” more than 1,000 breweries around the country brewed the beer. Consumers around the country should expect to see it on taps in the next few weeks. The brewery posted a map on its website with the locations.

“Thank you to our employees, thank you to our community, and thank you to our incredible brewing industry. Humbled and grateful doesn't begin to describe it,” a spokesperson for Sierra Nevada said in a statement.

If you’d like to brew your own batch of Resilience IPA, the recipe for a 5-gallon (19 l) batch is below, but percentages and IBUs are included so you can adjust the batch size if you want. Also included are suggestions for an extract option.

Mash the grains at 152°F (70°C) for 60 minutes. If you are including a mash-out step, raise the temperature to 168°F (76°C) and hold for 10 minutes. Sparge with 168°F (76°C) water to collect 6.53 gallons (24.7 liters) of wort. Boil for 80 minutes, following the hops schedule. At flame-out, stir the wort to cool slightly and add the whirlpool hops. Let rest for 20 minutes before chilling the wort to slightly below fermentation temperature. Aerate the wort with pure oxygen or filtered air and pitch the yeast. Ferment at 60–62°F (15–16°C).

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Add the dry hops toward the end of active fermentation, when the SG is about 1.020–1.024. Let rest for 4 days or until fermentation is complete. Cold crash to drop the hops out of solution. Rack to secondary or keg.

After steeping, remove the specialty grains and bring the water to a boil. Add the malt extract. When adding malt extract, it is recommended that you turn off or remove the heat so as not to scorch the extract on the bottom of the pot.

This recipe was provided by Sierra Nevada Brewing Company. Chip Walton of Chop & Brew scaled it down from the original recipe.

John Holl is the Senior Editor of Craft Beer & Brewing Magazine®. Email tips and story suggestions to [email protected].